Early Indo-European Texts

Old French

Brigitte L.M. Bauer and Jonathan Slocum

This page contains a text in Old French with a modern English translation.
This particular text and its translation are extracted from a lesson in the
Early Indo-European Online
series, where one may find detailed information about this text
(see the Table of Contents page for Old French Online in
EIEOL),
and general information about the Old French language and its speakers' culture.

Translation

HERE OUR LADY SPEAKS TO THEOPHILE, AND SHE SAID:
Who are you, who goes through here?

THEOPHILE:
Dear Lady! Have mercy on me!
It is the miserable
Theophile, the unhappy one
Whom devils have tied and taken hold of.
Now I come to pray
To you, Lady, and to beg for mercy,
So that he will not look for the moment that
He will come to torment me, he
Who has put me in such great misery.
You considered me already as your son,
Beloved queen!

OUR LADY SPEAKS:
I do not care about your story.
Go away, go out of my chapel.

THEOPHILE SPEAKS:
Lady, I do not dare.
Flowering wild rose and lily and rose,
In whom the Son of God rests,
What shall I do?
I feel I am badly committed
Towards the furious devil
I do not know what to do :
I will never stop begging!
Virgin, noble maiden,
Honored Lady,
My soul will be devoured completely,
When staying in hell
With Cain.

OUR LADY:
Theophile I have known you
In the past when I had you at my service.
Know for sure,
I will make you have your agreement back
Which you gave away by ignorance.
I go look for it.

HERE OUR LADY LEAVES TO GET THE AGREEMENT OF THEOPHILE
Satan, Satan, are you in prison?
If you have come to this world now
In order to start to trouble my clerk,
You thought so in vain.
Give back the agreement that you got from the clerk
Because you have done too much harm.

SATAN SPEAKS:
Me give it back to you!
I would very much prefer that they hang me! ...